 |
Have you ever wondered where it all began? Wondered who was the first ever Gunner to serve Australia? Whose footsteps are we now following in?
The first person to join the Colonial Military Forces with the Regimental Number of No 1 was a Gunner. That Gunner was Henry Thomas Green.
Henry joined the Colonial Military Forces on 7th August 1871 and became a member of 'A' Field Battery.
The following article was written on 6th August 1952:
"Two Norfolk Island pine trees planted at Victoria Barracks, Sydney, recently in memory of Warrant-Officer Henry Green and Major-General William Holmes, C.M.G., D.S.O., also commemorate a long-standing family relationship. About 70 years ago two families, the Greens and the Holmes', lived on either side of the clock tower at the Barracks. Head of the Green family was Englishman Warrant Officer Green, who had served in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny before coming to Australia in the 1870s. He joined the permanent forces out here and had the distinction of being No. 1 in the N.S.W. Regiment, which later became the Royal Australian Artillery Regiment. The marriage of his daughter Susan to William Holmes, son of the family on the other side of the tower, provided a link between the two families which has now extended into the fourth generation. William Holmes, who had begun his career as a bugler, received the D.S.O. in the South African War and later became Major-General Holmes when he commanded the Fourth Division, A.I.F., in France in World War I. He was killed at Messines Ridge in 1917. The memorial tree-planting ceremony at the Barracks was watched by representatives of the four generations of the Green-Holmes families. The eldest was 90-year-oldHenry Thomas Green, son of Warrant-Officer Green, and the youngest was nine-year old Susan Travers, great-great-granddaughter of Warrant-Officer Green and great-granddaughter of Major General Holmes." |
